Month: January 2012

#rsrh Assad regime tries another amnesty offer.

A general amnesty, from protesting to armed rebellion: and if you’re not convinced that the Assad regime means it, well, you’re not alone in that cynical, yet probably accurate take on the subject.  As the BBC put it: “This is not the first time President Assad has offered an amnesty to his opponents, and it is unlikely to have any more impact than the ones he proposed last year…”

Meanwhile… meanwhile, it feels like everybody’s having a lull and catching their breaths at the same moment, honestly.  I think that we’ve got another couple of weeks or maybe a month before things suddenly get a lot worse in Syria, but what do I know?

#rsrh QotD, Ouch. Just… Ouch Edition.

The Weekly Standard’s Matthew Continetti, on Valerie Jarrett, Obama crony:

Many have wondered—and the Washington Post asked last year—“What, exactly, does Valerie Jarrett do?” No one has a clear answer. Whatever she does, the U.S. taxpayer pays her $172,200 a year to do it.

Continue reading #rsrh QotD, Ouch. Just… Ouch Edition.

Explaining the Great British Food Paradox.

To wit: British food supposedly sucks, only when I visited England a couple of years ago the food was just fine – including the “pub grub.”  Potential answer in comments here, which is riffing off of this webcomic: the stereotype is archaic, as it originated when England was: dealing with WWI & WWII food shortages; in the middle of a century of deliberate cheap food subsidies; and/or hadn’t joined the Common Market yet.  In other words, there’s a general consensus that they’re all much better now, but there’s a certain ideological flavor (or ‘flavour’) to the discussion over why.

All I know is, bacon looks weird over there.  Still tastes fine, though, which is really the important thing.

#rsrh You know, somebody encouraged this poor woman…

…with a rotten life and bad prospects to go out there and keep trying to recruit more people to vote for the man whose party largely put her in her position.

Over the past three years, [Earline] Coe could have easily become one of those on the other end of the line — a no, a hang-up, a “refused.”

After working for Obama in the last election, Coe lost her job as a retail manager. She got another job, then lost that, too, as the recession deepened. Recently, her unemployment benefits ran out. Her husband’s job as a postal worker could be tenuous.

Whoever did that to that poor woman should be ashamed of him- or herself. Continue reading #rsrh You know, somebody encouraged this poor woman…

#rsrh QotD, Obama Sets A High Bar For Bad Economic Boasting Edition.

The New Yorker – yeah, I know, and believe me: they’re not being friendly to Romney on general principles – on Romney’s decision to go with a possibly semantically null ‘jobs created’ argument to justify his Bain experience:

Ironically, Romney has made a similar mistake to the one the Obama Administration made in early 2009, when two of Obama’s economists released a study with overly optimistic unemployment projections. Ever since then, critics have been able to point to that study as evidence that, if judged by Obama’s own standard, his stimulus has been a failure.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) The New Yorker is referring, of course, the infamous “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan:” the “two economists” were Christina Romer (former Chair of Council of Economic Advisers) and Jared Bernstein (former Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser for the Vice President).  Arguably, Romer and Bernstein have the honor of being the first two individuals whose careers were sacrificed the benefit of President Obama: also, contra the New Yorker the administration was certainly happy enough to own said plan.  Up until the moment that it became clear that it wasn’t even remotely going to work.

What does this have to do with Romney?  Not much, except to note that if we’re going to compare goofy, meaningless economic statements the king of them is still going to be Barack Obama.